At the time being, in the field of e-commerce the selection of a shipping option is performed by the customer after or during the finalization of a purchase in an online store. Often, more than one shipping option is selectable. Regularly, not only different providers (such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, DPD, and others) but also different products or services of a specific provider (such as express shipping or parcel shipping) are selectable. Regularly, the customer is only given the choice to influence shipping time. That means either the customer chooses a longer delivery period (with usually lower costs) or the customer chooses a faster delivery period (with usually higher costs).
An increase of the online selectable shipping options (due to multiple providers offering their shipping solutions online, or due to an easier selectability of additional options, such as CO2 neutral solutions, insured shipping, track and trace, or combined shipping of multiple shipments) will lead to a more complex selection. Thereby, the selection process will be more and more complex, unwieldy and non-simple for both the operator of the online store (who needs to provide different shipping solutions) and the customer (who struggles to find the ideal solution for his situation). Particularly for the customer, the selection process can quickly become very user-unfriendly. Additionally, some of the options (for instance the addition of a CO2 neutral shipping option) may not influence costs or delivery time in as much as the customer would assume. However, because of the perceived influence, e.g. on cost, the customer may forego a desired option.
Thus, the selection of shipping services and options becomes an increasingly nontransparent and complex process of optimization, during which the user (in this case the end customer) is not supported. This can lead to a situation where the customer may refrain from a purchase, meaning that no purchase order is made as the customer cannot find the desired shipping service/option, or where the customer demand for a simple and ideal shipping solution is not complied with resulting in dissatisfaction.
Generally, the customer assesses the quality of a shipping procedure in view of the so called “7R” of Edward G. Plowmann, i.e.                the right product,        to the right customer,        in the right amount,        at the right place,        in the right state,        in the right shipping time,        at the right costs.        
For instance, regarding the parameters of the right shipping time and the right costs, shipping may be performed in less than 12 hours by a courier as well as in 4 weeks by shipping as collective consignment via sea freight. Additionally, the state of the shipped consignment can be supervised and protected (for instance by real time tracking, actively or passively cooled transports, shipping with further security options etc.). The differences in costs may be immense and it may be difficult for the customer to estimate or select them, as some products cannot be combined with others (for instance, low cost real time tracking and expedited shipping). In addition, the customer can often only select a small pre-picked selection of shipping options. However, due to disappearing barriers in the area of information technology (i.e. more and more options can be provided) and due to an increasing transparency, the selectable options will need to increase. The customer will therefore have to meet the challenge to select the shipping option suitable for his demands.
However, in the state of the art, this is mainly done by comparing individual options with each other in a “binary way”, i.e. option A is faster, option B is slower, option C is in between and so forth. Each of the options is presented as an individual option to be selected. For instance, for each option A, B, C, etc. multiple radio buttons (as an example of multiple UI elements) or multiple entries of a drop down list (as an example of multiple UI elements) are presented to the customer and the customer has to select one of the UI elements in order to indicate his or her option. However, this leads to the nontransparent, complex and tedious process of selecting a shipping option, as outlined above. Additionally, during the selection process, the customer is often not informed about the specific provider performing the shipping, as the information is either not available or not shown to the customer. However, this may be of importance to the customer.
It is therefore an object of the invention, inter alia, to overcome one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Embodiments of the present invention provide, inter alia, methods, apparatuses, systems, programs, and storage media for selecting a dataset via a relational UI element. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the embodiments of the invention provided herein.